All 3 entries tagged Tetbury

35lbs of wool… up a big hill

More at www.tetburyonline.co.uk

: 30 May 2007 23:30 |  Tags: Sport Tetbury Video Woolsack Day |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Website taking shape

My plan for world domination is taking shape and Tetbury Online is now on shiny new servers with FTP and everything (yeah, that’s how backward the old one was!). The whole site’s online except for the homepage, and it seems to be working, which is something of a miracle.

Check it out if you’re bored (http://www.tetburyonline.co.uk ) or head over to one of the pages behind the placeholder for the main thing (http://www.tetburyonline.co.uk/Directory ). If it doesn’t work, blame your ISP for not updating its DNS name servers. Yeah, I don’t know what that means either.

: 30 Aug 2006 19:28 |  Tags: Tetbury Tetbury Online Website |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My geeky summer project

Having spectacularly failed to find a job this summer (and buggering off to Thailand instead), my quest to spend the next year living above the poverty line has led me to give my existing website a serious jolt up the rear.

The plan is to make Tetbury Online profitable, five years after it was set up. So far it's probably cost a fair bit in domain names, not to mention time. But now it's time to turn it into a business, hopefully creating a little bit of pocket money for my year at Cardiff Uni. You never know, I might just be able to afford to eat.

The plan is to attract advertising from local businesses, charging upwards of £3 per week for space on the right of the homepage. For this, they'll get to reach 400–500 users, which compared with the local magazine is a bargain (circulation of 4,100 – £100 for a front page ad). I'm going to start targetting the businesses who already appear to spend a large amount on marketing, as the prices I'm charging will probably seem relatively tiny compared to what they're used to. There's also a bookshop which might bring in a small income by getting commission from Amazon.co.uk.

Most of my time so far has been spent on revamping the site. Much of it is nearly five years old, and some of the vital information is utterly useless. To be honest the website's been a liability more than anything else for the past 12 months. I've completely changed the graphics to make them a little more Web 2.0, although the real techies will be disappointed to hear there's not even a whiff of Java, php or anything else remotely complicated. It's just pure HTML.

The site's got a number of new features, such as a kids section, clever local maps from Google, a shiny new Message Board, and a worryingly large business directory which has probably taken most of my time.

I'm moving hosting companies to make the site easier to edit from Cardiff and also to cut out the annoying pop–up ads that I think were caused by my free hosting solution. Sadly it means I'm going to be paying at least £60 a year in hosting costs alone, so the need to make money is greater than ever.

If I can attract even a few adverts I should be able to break–even. But what I'd really like to do is turn the site into a profitable business which'll help get a mortgage in a few years time. Double the number of hits with pieces in the local newspaper and by improving the site's reputation, and it might just be possible!

The new site will go online in the next fortnight (hopefully!), so take a look now and compare it with the new site soon.

EDIT: The old site's gone offline already, so expect to see a placeholder any day now…

Tetbury Online

: 29 Aug 2006 20:33 |  Tags: Advertising Internet Summer Project Tetbury Tetbury Online Website Design |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem